


Following the Song

by Jadedphase



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-19
Updated: 2014-06-19
Packaged: 2018-02-05 07:16:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1809931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadedphase/pseuds/Jadedphase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do you know how to dance?" Octavia teased and reached before he could answer, pushing the rifle off to the side to rest against a tree before she took both his hands and pulled him into her rhythm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Following the Song

**Author's Note:**

> Anon request for some Jasper x Octavia with no real theme mentioned.  
> It was a little outside my usual, but I tried to tackle the idea and I hope the requester likes it. :)

She had been outside the walls for hours, walking the paths around the camp in silence while the skies above her kept guard over steps and her tired eyes searched the world around her for a single white flower.  
But there was none, because Lincoln was gone and she didn't know if he would ever come back; so her watchful vigil went onward. 

But her steps were light, stirring dust and bits of leaves all around her with each motion, hands lifted above her head and fingers stretched to the stars; trying to allow all the burden of those long days to slide off her shoulders, to give it back to the wind to carry it so very far away.

To be free, of trouble and regret and everything else, simply free. 

"You shouldn't be out here alone."

At first she thought it may have been her brother, since Bellamy was her constant watchdog, but the voice was all wrong in the darkness; more caution than commanding. 

"Jasper?" She ventured to guess and was rewarded by the slink of his figure out from the cover of the trees nearby. "Were you following me?"

"No," he quickly replied then stumbled to clarify, "I mean, yeah, I was. But I wasn't following you to follow you. I was following you because it's not safe out here."

Octavia could not help but laugh at his uneven shifting and fidgeting, his fingers gripping the rifle too tightly and his eyes gleaning brightly in the cast of starlight from above. 

"You're getting as bad as my brother," she mentioned just to watch the way he flinched at the thought, at least in regards to her. In every other way though she was mostly convinced that Jasper wanted to be Bellamy's shadow. 

 

"What were you doing out here anyway?"

His attempts to steer the conversation elsewhere she permitted, not feeling as much the need to tease him as she simply wanted some company in the dark. The nights were too long for the both of them since the world had become so stark. 

"Dancing," came her reply, spur of the moment but once she had voiced it Octavia decided it was true. 

"Oh, okay," Jasper nodded with his eyes cast back to the trees in his endless searching of the trees, "why?"

"Why not?" Octavia countered with a sly smile, drawing herself back in a swaying circle and tipping her head back for an energetic instant while she listened to the music only she could hear playing from somewhere in the parts of her mind where hope and simple things still existed. 

He watched her, head tilting a bit when she slid past him, the motions smooth as she made them up while she went, finding some rhythm in her escape; he didn't mean to stare so much as watch but Jasper had always been helpless when it came to her. 

"Do you know how to dance?" Octavia teased and reached before he could answer, pushing the rifle off to the side to rest against a tree before she took both his hands and pulled him into her rhythm. 

Jasper offered a sheepish laugh and a shake of his head, trying his best not to trip over his own sneaker when one foot made a mess of following the other, "No, well, I've never tried."

"It's easy," she assured him and kept his hands grasped while she led him in an uneven pattern to and fro, "see?"

Jasper didn't, not really, she had more grace than he could match and he did well to keep up in his own clumsy way; but if Octavia cared she didn't show it because her face was lit with a smile that made his chest tighten and his stomach do a tiny flip. 

And the fact that he was trying so hard, in spite of side-stepping roots and her own feet was endearing. The way Jasper threw himself, headfirst and often led by blind faith, into the effort of living up to peoples' expectations, to make them happy; it was the best thing about him. It was also the part of him that was so much better than most people, in that awkward, puppy-eager way. 

Right that moment his tongue was stuck out just past his lower lip, brow furrowed in concentration as he glanced down now and then to keep track of where she was moving and guess at where she would go next; it was so charmingly sweet that she had to smile. 

Octavia knew he was one of a kind, but it was a pity that not too many other people saw it. Just as much a pity that she often overlooked it herself in the rush of life around her. 

"You really are terrible at this," she laughed when his knee bumped into her's for the third time and he nodded in humored agreement. 

"I tried to warn you."

"Maybe we're doing this wrong," Octavia's smile flickered back across her lips and she closed the gap between them by pulling him into her space, closer, until her hands left his and lifted to circle his neck instead. 

For an instant he froze, under the edge of the dark hair drifting over his face she could see his eyes grow slightly larger with uncertainty but she ushered it away with a nudge of her elbow to his side. 

"I think I broke him."

 

The word finally earned her a laugh and a hint of color streaking across the bridge of his nose that she leaned up to erase with a kiss to the spot, butterfly light, before Octavia drew back and began to sway in time with some tuneless song she hummed in the silence between them. 

Jasper was better at it, the slow version of dancing, once he made sense of where to place his hands; he started gingerly at her ribs but once he warmed to the idea that he didn't need to edge back they dropped to settle at the small of her back instead in a perfect fit to the way her spine curved to hold herself close to him until he got the hint and held her there himself. 

While the night kept watch over them her head came to rest against his shoulder and they swayed, giving in to the subtle motions meant as an excuse to stay close once they both allowed it. And they were both chasing it, that excuse, because the world was so much larger than them anymore and it was so very, very easy to lose so much; anything worth clinging to was worth treasuring.  
It was discovery in slow degrees; she reveling in the way he kept her safe within the enclosure of his arms and he in awe of the way she gave herself to the moment and curled up so close and eased. 

They both forgot, for the short span of that dance, the days and nights and the places where either of them began or ended; caught up instead in a song barely whispered past her lips and the background music the night played just for the two of them.


End file.
